I originally intended to write an entry about how awesome my birthday was, dinner at Red Robin, chilling here after, brunch with family the next day, not to mention a great haul (accordion, books, games, dvds, money for Hulk comics...) but most of you were there at some point, so I don't see too much of a reason to do so.

I could write about Valentines, but a capsule description will suffice. I bought wine, cooked steak and shrooms, and then wound up really hosed and playing on the Xbox with Jenn and watching a movie after. Best of all, it was a surprise for Jenn, including the flowers, candles, soft music and mushy card.

As for a general update, I'm swimming, working, reading, playing on the Xbox, and yes, attempting to learn the accordion.

But here's the thing that inspired me to finally make an entry.

When Lego put out the Star Destroyer, it was the largest set to date, at 3,104 pieces.
Next up was the Death Star II, at 3,417 pieces, just over 300 more.

Now, available for pre-order, is the UCS Millennium Falcon. True Minifig scale.

5,195 pieces.
Over 13 pounds, just shy of two feet wide and three feet long.
$680 CDN to pre-order, free shipping (when it ships in October) if you order by March 31.

I do not want it. It's beautiful, an amazing model, but I have better things to spend that much money on, no place to put it, and to be honest, I'm enjoying assembling my sets less and less each time I do it, and this set has 67% more pieces than the set that took 20 man-hours to assemble. It's like the killer whales in the aquarium. Really cool to look at, but I can't say I want to take one home.

Today my Sandcrawler arrived in the mail. It feels a little weird to have gotten something for myself so soon after Jenn's birthday, but we did agree that my quarterly bonus would be spent on my Lego collection, the bonus just came in mid October. Actually, the Sandcrawler only took up about half the bonus, the other half more or less went towards her tattoo. Anyway, what the Sandcrawler means, I think, is that for the first time since I've started collecting Lego as a hobby, my collection is up to date and complete before the next year. Next year is the last year I intend to collect, and so far there appear to only be two or three sets, all of which are quite inexpensive for Lego, that I want to own. I'm actually pretty excited to be so close to being done, the question is what will I do for a hobby afterward? These last couple years I've actually been more into Star Wars than Lego, and I'm also taking an interest in Hulk comics, but with the Star Wars movies complete and Hulk tpb's being relatively few, it will be hard to devote as much energy as I have to my Lego. So far it looks like I'll start buying video games, books, and dvds, like several other people do. Of course, the task I have set in front of myself for my Lego now is to photograph each set for insurance purposes, which means assembling and disassembling every set. A daunting task indeed. Having help for the Halowe'en party was actually a lot of fun, maybe I'll start having assembly parties, an activity I can combine with my homebrewing. For those of you who are wondering exactly how much Lego I have, here's some summaries from my database:

Number of sets: 425
Number of minifigs: 1048
Number of pieces: 85350

The set count is accurate, but the total for minifigs and pieces doesn't take into account the individual parts I've bought over the years on bricklink. I could go through my old receipts and add them in, but I think saying "over eighty five thousand pieces" makes the point well enough.

Just to start this entry with something that isn't Star Wars, here's a joke I just thought up after tidying dinner.

Q: Sometimes when you lift a pot roast out of a crock pot, a piece of meat falls off and lands back in the broth, and you can't find it again. Where does it disappear to?

A: Gravy Jones' Locker!

What, you no like? Maybe me not shutting up about Star Wars is not so bad after all. This is more of a Lego post anyway. Images of the 2007 lineup have been leaked. ( Observe behind cut. )

I decided a while back to sell some things on eBay. I waited for them to offer their "list 5 items for free" promo, and put up some of my old treasure from my parent's place. Turns out it's not worth very much at all. I think that part of the problem is shipping, people would ask me for a quote and then they wouldn't bid when they got it. In the end, I'm rather disappointed, but it's kind of fun to pack things up to send off around the globe. I don't think I'll do it again, though, garage sales, free listings and swap meets are the way to go.

On the plus side, What money I've made is good for a couple things. Jenn and I found this really cool online costume store, and bought ourselves some faux-leather costume boots. I got some black cavalry type boots I can use for the pirate outfit Jenn's going to sew for me, or a Jedi costume at some later indeterminate time. I've also placed an order for the last of the locally unobtainable Star Wars Lego sets, and once I have those there will be only one set I'm missing (not counting the other not yet released one), which is readily available from the Lego website. Oh, so close, I can't wait to be finished.

On the down side, I just got a letter from the Canada Revenue Agency. They've reasessed my 2002 return, and rejected all of my expense claims from when I worked as a diver, meaning I now owe them more money than I care to admit in my LJ. To be honest, I've been worried this might happen, I heard different things from different sources about what I could or couldn't claim, but at least it's only a reasessment, because in my more paranoid hours I imagined being hurled away for decades on fraud charges (stupid overactive imagination...). This has come at an unfortunate time though, as Jenn and I are still recovering from an oversight earlier this month when we went nuts at Ikea. The closest there is to a silver lining here is that I can pay the difference between that and this year's return, which will take out nearly a quarter of it, and the rest will fit on the line of credit. It's not really good, but at least I can manage it. On the other hand, I just talked to Fido, and my contract is up so I switched to another plan which should cut down my cellular bill by two thirds. Once Jenn's contract is up and we get her switched, we should be doing pretty good.

Things like this overwhelm me and make me anxious, but there's nothing I can do except to keep doing what I'm already doing. Keep putting money in the RRSP, keep taking bites out of debt, use a moderate amount of willpower to avoid overspending (sometimes), and over time things will get better.

On sunday I got a call from my mom on my cell phone, so I called her back on my break. My grandfather had just died that morning. I know he wasn't doing well, not for the last several years. Long story short, he was epileptic, and the medications they used back in the day were pretty harsh, and prolonged exposure combined with what they had him on up untill recently gave him symptoms of alzheimers. Mercifully, he went peacefully in his sleep, at the end of a long life, with a large family, and I don't think anyone can honestly hope to do better than that, and wherever he is now, I'm sure he's with his wife again after over 20 years. He was a rock, peaceful and dependable, with a quick wit and a keen mind, of the card-counting variety. I remember being awed by him as a kid when I heard he had been escorted out of various casinos in Reno for winning too much.

Right away, I started recollecting the good times I'd had with him. I shared a few of them at his funeral on thursday, but this one I didn't mention, instead I saved it for my blog. For those of you who haven't caught on, I am a Lego fiend, and I have been since I was a kid. I remember one birthday (could have been christmas, but I'm pretty sure it was my birthday), Grandpa gave me this set:



I hadn't seen any grey space sets in the stores in a long while, and it knocked my socks off that he'd found one. To this day it remains one of my favourites of classic space. As I finished my shift on sunday, I decided to rebuild it in new colours as a tribute. I got Jenn to pick up a pie (Grandpa loved pies, especially lemon meringue with a cup of tea), and after desert that night I assembled this little vignette:



I call it Georgebot (click on the picture to see a small gallery of images). My grandpa was a blackjack player, and had a mind boggling hat collection. So here we see Georgebot, wearing his fanciest hat, with the ace of hearts on the table, and another card not yet flipped. Will it be a ten, or a face card? Will lady luck smile on Georgebot one last time and give him a blackjack? Is luck even a factor, or has he counted the deck again? Let's all wish him the best of luck anyway.

As a tribute to the man he was and the impact he had on my family's lives, a vignette is pretty pathetic. But as a whimsical tribute to the fun I had with him when I was younger, I think this works just fine. Rest in peace, Grandpa.

In order to familiarize myself with the GURPS combat system (and justify the expense of the battlemap Jenn and I bought last year), I decided to make some generic fighter type characters who could randomly battle each other in an arena. I made up the minifigs and arena obstacles months ago, but it was just last saturday that I finally finished making up stats for the four medievil characters, and today I finally took some pictures and put them up in a brickshelf gallery (click on the picture for a link). I'm not going to make stats for the four high-tech characters for a bit, because two of them need to have stats for their equiptment first. In the mean time, it should be all ready to play next time Jenn and I host tea. The idea is to make it kind of like Star Wars Epic Duels, and either do single or team combat. It will probably not play as quick untill I have the rules down a little firmer, but that's the point of the exercise. Once I know what I'm doing, I'll be better equipped to run a game. Here's the four available characters (based on 50 points each):

Archer: Fast character, proficient with wrestling and archery.

Dirk: Very fast, not very strong, knife fighter with a compulsion for risky behaviour.

Helmut: Generic sword and shield fighter.

Lumbering Jack: Slow, heavily armoured, strong berserker type.

So, like I said, anyone who wants to play, it will be set to go next time tea is at our place. And if certain "dubious" individuals have negative comments to make about GURPS stemming from barbershop singing, math nerd cheer-boys, don't bother, I've already heard it. ;p

Jenn and I picked up Firefly a while ago, and we've been steadily making our way through it. One thing I've noticed is a similarity between one of the characters on Firefly, and one from another show she insisted on picking up:








Anyone else see it?

And for those of you who care, check out this Lego model of Serenity.

I meant to post this about three weeks ago, so here it is at long last, my Coralskipper from the New Jedi Order series (for those of you who I didn't force to look at this at my birthday tea):



First, it doesn't look at all like the "official" version, because I think that one looks like a zombie's bruised nut-sack. Secondly, it's about half the size it should be to be minifig scale, but I always envisioned coralskippers as being smaller than x-wings and swarming all over the place, even though the books say the two fighters are about the same size. Aside from that I've got the volcano-like guns and mica-like canopy. The ship is supposed to be grown out of "yorik coral", so I used red and orange to give it a coral colour. I tried to make it a little organic by mottling the colours and making it slightly asymmetrical. When reading the books I pictured the dovin basal* as being at the front of the ship instead of the back, because it works on attraction instead of propulsion. When I was reading the books I imagined the dovin basal as being shaped like a big blue heart with red veins, but that was too hard to build, so here I've made it into a translucent, vein-coloured mushroom held onto the front of the craft by pincers. Click on the picture for a link to the brickshelf gallery, where I've also got a shot of two Yuzhan Vong warriors and Jaina, Jacen, and Anakin Solo.

*An organism that can manipulate gravity. It moves the ship by latching on to distant gravity wells, and can create miniature black holes to shield the ship.

It's been (about) a week since the last post about my collection dilemma, and while I only got two responses, they were very good responses. So now I've decided (with Jenn) to commit to finishing the collection. On the plus side, the 2006 line so far seems to be mostly re-releases, with only three sets that I want to buy so far, the grand total estimating around $150, which is no big deal. This does take into consideration two sets which aren't released yet, but we'll see how many more come out. The bad news is that five episode three sets, which haven't been out for a year yet, are already sold out online with no plans to produce more. This means unless they are found somewhere soon, I'll probably be paying double what they're worth to get them new on BrickLink. So if anyone happens to see these sets anywhere randomly, please pick them up for me and I'll pay you back plus a 20% finder's fee. ( Here's what I'm looking for: )

When I was looking at my loot on boxing day, I came to a realization. For the first time in over ten years, I got no Lego for Christmas. What was really odd to me was that I didn't mind at all. In the past, no matter how much Lego I got on Christmas or my birthday, I always thought "Yeah, but I wish that shirt was a twenty dollar set that's still on my 'to get' list." But not this year. This year I was gifted some awesome stuff, and wouldn't trade any of it for Lego. This made me question the personal value of my collection. I can't figure out what the appeal is, I just know it's there. And I have a lot of Lego. Follow this link for a table of all the sets I currently own. But there's still more needed to complete the collection, and I'm not sure if that's what I want. So now it's time for me to figure that out. The first thing I did was research if there's any kind of mental illnesses associated with collecting, and I found these three articles (two of which contain similar text in the middle, but wrap up differently):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/18/AR2005111803061.html
http://www.insideflyer.com/articles/article.php?key=2168
http://www.journalism.ryerson.ca/online/replay/altlife/rsimonetta.htm

Having read these articles, I decided that there's nothing truly wrong with my hobby, as it doesn't really negatively impact my life, but the dilemma remains.
Then I went on to make a pros, cons, and possible solutions list. Jenn has gone through and bolded items which she finds to be important. Now, I'm sharing that list in my livejournal, and I invite anyone who reads this to share their thoughts with me, especially if they've ever wanted to or have discarded a large collection of personal items. Basically, I'm at a crossroads, and I want to get as much input as I can before I make any decisions. This is a lot more intimate than I usually care to get in my LJ, but I really want more viewpoints here.

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Reasons For the Lego Collection:

1: I have invested a huge amount of time and money in it
2: it gets a positive reaction from people
3: I am afraid that losing it would be like losing part of myself
4: I may, in the future, become nostalgic and appreciate it more
5: most of it is now rare and difficult to replace, which makes it special
6: I feel like I might not be unique without it
7: I'm not sure if I'm actually tired of collecting or just randomly depressed about something else whenever I'm in the mood to get rid of it
8: whatever gap in my life that it filled in the past may need to be filled again
9: there is a final limit of what I want to collect, and when I reach it my income will be free to spend on other things
10: all that's left is Star Wars, which is something I love with or without Lego (but with is better)
11: I have enjoyed creating my own models (vignettes, the Remembrance Day dioramas, the obstacles for a miniature battle game...)
12: if I finish the collection and decide it was a bad idea, I can always sell it and get my money back, whereas not finishing it and changing my mind would mean shelling out nearly twice as much later

Reasons Against the Lego Collection:

1: it seems unhealthy to define part of myself by having a large amount of a particular type of thing
2: sometimes I feel like an addict, I don't know why I do it, but I feel like I have to
3: I haven't enjoyed assembling for several months now (seems more like a chore than a hobby)
4: if I were to lose it in a fire or a natural disaster it could not be easily replaced
5: even when I have something assembled, I keep it under a dust cloth where I can't see it, and I rarely have guests to display sets for
6: even disassembled, it nearly needs its own room
7: it is expensive to maintain
8: it is a frozen asset I can easily liquidate
9: I want to spend money on other things, like comics, dvds, an X-box, and most importantly debt reduction so Jenn can get a daytime job and I can see her more
10: if I died tomorrow, it would be difficult for my wife and family to sort through and deal with the collection, unlike books, dvds and video games, which all have designated second hand stores or are accepted by pawn shops or charities
11: selling it would free me from having to worry about where to keep it, whether or not to assemble any or all of it, how much to insure it for, and how much of my money it's tying up

Possible Courses of Action:

1: finish collection (only Star Wars sets from 2005, 2006, and 2007, current wish list roughly $800 before taxes)
2: finish collection by selling specific "less interesting" sub-themes (Sting Rays, Royal Knights, Spyrius, etc.)
3: stop collecting after purchasing only Revenge of the Sith sets from 2005 which represent significant parts from the movie (estimate: $200 before taxes?)
4: stop collecting immediately (which will leave me with no "post colour change" sets, which is fine, but also no Revenge of the Sith sets), and keep the collection
5: stop collecting immediately, and sell all but the most liked of sets (may or may not include Star Wars sets)
6: stop collecting immediately, and sell everything except the building lego
7: stop collecting immediately, and sell the entire collection
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That's about it. The mood I'm in greatly affects the solution that appeals to me most, and I want a solution I can justify and live with. In the end, the decision is mine alone, but like I said, extra points of view would be greatly appreciated, and a big help for making my decision.

It's been a while since I did a Lego-related post, and I feel the need to share this. Here is a model brought to you by the same folks as the mini-mizer, and it is what I call "intelligent design".

I tried making lasagna using my dad's recipe last weekend. I modified it a little though, I substituted buffalo for beef, 200g of mushrooms for pork, 500g of ricotta cheese for cottage cheese, and added about a teaspoon of mexican hot sauce to the meat mixture. It turned out pretty good and was well recieved, although I found it to be a little dry. I couldn't find the right size can of crushed tomatoes, and ricotta is apparently denser than cottage cheese, so I only had about 2/3 of what I needed. So next time, maybe I'll just simmer the sauce for 45 minutes instead of an hour and use 750g of ricotta. Also there were too many noodles, so next time I'll just count out 16 instead of boiling up the whole pack.

Today I went out to Best Buy and bought some headphones and the Episode III soundtrack. Their online price for the CD was $14.99, but when I got to the store I found a sign that said it was $10.99. This was actually kind of annoying at first, because there weren't any copies under Star Wars in the soundtrack section of their CD's. I looked around though, and found it after a bit in a big Star Wars display. It comes with a free DVD, which is about 17 of the music tracks from all six movies, set to video clips from the films. They tell the abridged story of Anakin, and they all have neat little introductions from Ian McDiarmid (which you have the option of turning off). I actually found it to be really cool, and I think it may actually tide me over untill I can buy the really expensive box of all six movies.

I've been building some stuff for Rememberance Day with my Lego. I never know what to put up, last year it was the Life on Mars sets, my line of thinking that it's really juvenile of us as a species to imagine other sentient species and ask if they're "friend or foe" before we decide how to react to them. Maybe we should just be friendly in the first place in case that's what they're thinking. Of course, the point of alien species is to make us think about foreign cultures, and I still think that humanity as a whole needs to improve it's ability to tolerate and accept. Because war sucks. Okay, I'll stop trying to be philosophical now. So back to building. I made two tiny dioramas. First off, Flanders' Fields.

This is as you can no doubt tell, a really easy model. Nowhere near as big as it should be, but I don't have enough pieces (this model includes all of my red 1x1 round plates)

Next is Jenn and I kicking back and watching Fraggle Rock and He-Man, and generally enjoying the life we have.

Something I think about every Rememberance Day is the fact that my Grandfather on my Dad's side served in WW2. He was an orphan from Saskatchewan, and joined a highland regiment. My Grandmother grew up in Ireland, and served as a nurse, and that's how they met. If it weren't for the war, they wouldn't have met, my Dad wouldn't have been born, and I wouldn't exist. Kind of an egotistical way to appreciate the sacrifices of more men and women than I'll ever know, but at least I can be thankful for the life I have because of their sacrifices. That being said, I do believe that all wars are tragedies, and I can only hope that eventually we'll all grow up and put them behind us.

Anyways, here's the gallery, which will be up after moderation.
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=153448

Long time no update. Jenn's birthday went incredibly well, her blog has most of the goings-on. One thing that sticks out in my mind is that I got to use the charcoal chimney I bought for the first time, and wow, that thing works like a hot damn. It really is amazing how having the right tools for the right job makes things so much easier. No lighter fluid, no messing around, just stick paper in the bottom, charcoal in the top and let it burn. My beer was generally well-recieved, I think the general consensus was "not great, but drinkable", which was really all I was hoping for. I wish a little more of it got drunk though, I still have about 15 bottles to finish up on my own. Unless I have guests who want to share with me.

Aside from that, things are moving along. Getting used to taking transit to work, it's not too bad. Gave my statement of what happened to ICBC yesterday, just have to wait for them to attribute fault and then I can look into cancelling my insurance. I have the stuff for paying off the car (which seems to have devalued $5000 in a little over a year), so I just have to make an appointment to get that taken care of. I can't wait to have this over with.

In other news, here's something amusing and sad I read about in the newspaper. And here's something I found trying to track down the previous item.

Also, Lego has bought a license for Batman, sets to come next year. I definately won't buy this. I hope that by the time I have kids to buy toys for Lego will be making their own original stuff, expecially for their Space theme, which hasn't had anything new since Life on Mars in 2001, which wasn't very much like regular Space Lego. The last of that kind of thing was Insectoids in 1998. As much as I love Star Wars, I want to see something original happening again.

UPDATE: 2HRS LATER

ICBC called, they've attributed 25% of the fault to me because I admitted (and witnesses verified) that I entered on the yellow. This is low enough that my insurance premiums won't be affected, and I'll get 75% of my deductable refunded to me. This is good enough for me, so I'm not going to challenge it. All that remains is to cancel the insurance and pay out the car.

Talked Jenn into buzzing my head the other day. She likes my hair longer, but it drives me nuts. Used the longest setting on the clippers, just because I like to put pomade in it and force it to part when it's really short, however it is too short for even that.

Made cookies today. Didn't have any brown sugar, so I substituted white. The result was burnt edges and a flavour like butter cookies only sweeter. Combined with the white chocolate chunks and berry Mike and Ikes I threw in, the result is almost revoltingly saccarine, but they're still cookies, thus edible.

In other news: Vikings. Like I said, anything made after 2003 that isn't Star Wars I'm not going to collect. But these are tempting to buy and put away for kids. Won't do it, though. Nuh-uh.

Saw the doctor today, he gave me the choice between two sleeping pills. The first I would take only on nights before I work just to knock me out, and when I didn't work the next day I would just sleep naturally. The second I would take every night for a week to normalize my sleep schedule, and then wean myself off of them. I asked if regular exercise would help, and he said not so much, especially if I were to exercise in the evenings I would be too wound up to sleep. I chose the second option for my prescription, and the doctor said the risk of psychological addiction was lower with that option anyway, which was comforting. I got the prescription filled at Save-On-Foods while I did my grocery shop, and in the pharmacy I saw the Greens+ vitamins I used to take. I remembered that I felt more energetic and alert when I was taking them regularly, so I picked up a bottle, and hopefully those plus the pills will get me back to my old awake at work self.

As an aside, check out this balrog. Or, if you prefer slightly less demonic things, a smurf house.

Just opened up my inbox, one new message, and my first impulse was to report it as junk because I didn't recognize who it was from. However, the subject line was "You are a winner in the LEGO survey", so I opened it. For the last two years, certain Lego sets have had little flyers where you log on to a website and fill in a survey for that set. Occasionally they email you back to answer some more detailed questions on that set too. Every 50 entries they pick a winner, and I've filled out at least a dozen forms, and about 3 secondary surveys too. Here's the email message:

"It is with great pleasure that I can inform you that your name has been drawn out among the participants in the Lego internet survey, and that you have won a LEGO product.
Please reply to this mail sending us your full name and address, and you will receive your prize within approximately six weeks.
Once again ACNielsen AIM and LEGO would like to thank you for participating in this survey.

Yours sincerely

Inger Petersen
ACNielsen AIM, Denmark"

I wonder what set I've won? I hope it doesn't have the new grays and browns, but it probably does, which wouldn't be too bad because I can still incorporate the other pieces into my collection, and give the gray and brown ones to Jenn for hers. Still, I hope it has lots of yellow. Even if it doesn't, this totally makes up for my Air Blazers set missing so many pieces. I gave them my parents' address, just because I'm moving by the end of the month and I don't want to start shipping things to my new address untill I've moved. (And I'm not going to blog about the new place untill then either, much the same way that I'm not going to blog about Star Wars untill I've seen ep. 3 again.) Regardless, I'm stoked. This is turning out to be a pretty good year.

So I found something to do. I pulled out the two containers with all the minifig parts, and started messing around. The flame pieces were right beside the garbage cans, and I thought "Hey, if I put those flames in a can, it will be a trash fire!" Then I thought "and I can make a vignette out of it!" Vignettes are a fad on brickshelf right now, basically dioramas on a 6x6 or 8x8 stud base. So I got out the digital camera, signed up for a brickshelf account, and here's the result:



I also made some vignettes of my sigfigs, another fad which has mostly passed. Sigfigs, or significant figures, are minifigs meant to look like you or people you know. First off is a vignette of Jenn and I playing a D20 game, although we only have d20's and d6's. Note the GM's screen, and the books shoved off to the side:



If we were playing our D&D alter egos, Stelliophen and Jenna Longbottom, their first encounter would probably be pretty weak, seeing as they're 1st level non-heroic class halflings. I envision grubby goblins with sticks:



Alternatively, if we were playing the Star Wars D20 game as Steneph Bron and Jinren Frost, we might be talking to a couple New Republic pilots after a narrow escape from pirates:



I've got five pics in each folder, the folders will take some time to be available (brickshelf has to "moderate" them first, but I have no idea what that means):
Trash Fire: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=126389
Roleplaying: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=126393
D&D: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=126394
Star Wars: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=126396

The stupid thing is that I should be asleep now, but after doing nothing fun all day, I felt I had to do something before going to bed to make today worth while.